Yesterday history repeat itself once more. The exchange ShareXcoin went abruptly offline and the owner went MIA, resulting in potential theft of hundreds of coins.. again. We had this before, Vircurex, Cryptorush, coinEX, and recently CoinOpend to just name a few.
And everytime the same reaction, a witch hunt for the alleged owner of said exchange. Apparently this community only cares about who safeguards their coins after that person scams you, this is logic 101 upside down.
This has to stop. No matter which coins you have allegiance with, no matter which exchange you use to trade on, this has to stop now.
If we want cryptocurrencies to move forward and thrive, its foundation has to be firm. Being able to trade your coin, any coin, in a secure and reliable way is a basic need that we can no longer take for granted.
The fact that we accept to trade our coins on exchanges that completely hide their identity behind a nickname on a public message board is undermining the professional growth the cryptocurrency world needs to thrive past this point.
Scamming exchanges are one most damaging things happening to cryptocurrencies. As long as we as a community keep supporting anonymous exchanges, run by some nicknames (no matter their "seniority" cfr. Tradefortress), we allow them the option to simply close down their exchange and run with all our coins.
For this I want to call upon the altcoin community, and DEMAND from your exchange to out themselves in public or CEASE TRADING at their exchange.
This will result in having overall good (with at least the intention to run it professionally) exchanges left, while weeding out the bad ones, the ones that simply do not care about anything but profit, and have zero inclination to help altcoins and this community forward.
Now, some of those anonymous exchanges have some liquidity in certain markets, so I realise the challenge for abandoning those. Yet please understand that we are often times supporting a ticking time-bomb, which potentially will blow up both our coins as the community's reputation.
A list of altcoin exchanges that are currently run by nicknames, and where the community should either demand public outing from or avoid trading on.
If an exchange is listed here, it means it's unclear who operates the exchange, either the people or the company behind it. If this is unintentional, take this as a wake-up call to add proper reference of this information on your site.
- Mcxnow - This exchange has scammed its users before, by pumping its own shares and then suddenly close down out of nowhere. This is just one of the many incidents their anonymous owner gets away with by just being a nickname.
- AllCrypt - No information found.
- BTC-E - People have traced them back to a bunch of holding companies in UK/Europe, but it's setup like a maze and unknown who is behind BTC-E.
- Poloniex - For the well informed it is known a certain "Tristan D’Agosta" is behind the nickname "busoni". Still there is no information on their site. I believe his intentions are good, but his current transparency efforts are just insufficient.
- C-CEX - No information found.
- DGex - Part of a company incorporated in Panama, no further info. This is just insufficient.
- AllCoin - Mention that they are a company, but no further details.
- EuropEx - No information found.
- UseCryptos - No information found.
- Comkort - No information found.
- Coins-e - No information found.
- Swisscex - No information found.
- Palth - No information found.
- Kingcoiny - No information found.
And last but not least, a list of exchanges who operate in a transparent matter, we should only trade on those exchanges:
- Mintpal - Company registration on /about page.
- Bittrex - Founder bios on the /about page
- Coinnext - Founder bios on the /about page
- Atomic-Trade - Company info clearly on their website
- Bleutrade - Founder bios on the /about page
- Swaphole - Company info on their site
- Bter - Company info on their site
- Cryptsy - Company info/Founder info clearly on their website
If I missed an exchange, send me a message and I will update the list accordingly.
I like your intentions! Nice collection.
One point to poloniex: "Poloniex is an LLC organized under the laws of Montana in the United States of America."
You can even check that